


perfect union

by Yuu_chi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Brief cannibalism mentions, Codependency, Developing Relationship, Exploration of body sharing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 12:57:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16285025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: Learning to live with the alien inside of you is one thing - learning how thin your barriers are between living and loving is another thing entirely.





	perfect union

Their first fight - their first _real_ fight - is months in the making.

Eddie’s not stupid - well, most of the time he’s not stupid. When it comes to Venom and their shared life, he likes to think that he’s gotten… if not a handle on things, then a general understanding of the lines and boundaries that define them.

The first time he smiles at a girl that’s not Anne, Venom nearly crushes their damn ribs. Gives a whole new meaning to “you took my breath away”, that’s for damn sure.

It’s not subtle. Then again, Eddie supposes, Venom’s never been known for his subtlety.

“Thank you for the coffee,” he wheezes, taking his overpriced latte from the girl’s hand and being extra careful that their fingers don’t touch.

“Any time,” the girl says, but her sunny smile drops when she catches sight of the pained grimace painting Eddie’s face. Eddie beats a quick retreat before the bafflement turns into concern.

“Alright,” Eddie says as the door swings shut behind him, leaving him in San Francisco’s muggy embrace, “what was that about?”

 _You smiled at her_.

Eddie covers his reply by taking a sip of his coffee. It’s mediocre at best. “I did.”

He can feel Venom’s sullen sulking radiating from the vague vicinity of his ribcage. _She was being nice to you._

“Yeah, because that’s how humans work. I know you haven’t exactly seen our brightest moments so far, but on a day-to-day basis we try our best to be decent to one another. Makes life easier for everybody.”

 _Flirting_ , Venom suggests with a sudden wave of aggression, and Eddie has to hold back his instinctual snarl, because he doesn’t think his ego could take people crossing the street to avoid him today.

“She was doing her damn job, Venom.”

 _She touched you_.

“She handed me my change! You’re being - you know what, we’re not talking about this anymore. It’s over with. I won’t even go back to the damn coffeeshop if you’d feel better about it, okay?”

 _Okay,_ Venom says, but the situation doesn’t _feel_ okay. Mostly, Venom feels grumpy and irritable, and as a result Eddie feels grumpy and irritable too.

He drinks his coffee and privately thinks that it hadn’t been worth Venom’s tantrum.

.

The next time Venom acts out, Eddie can’t even blame it on a lack of understanding towards human social cues. Doesn’t mean he can’t be mad about it though - especially when Venom wrenches control of their body, leans forward, and screams in the face of the poor man who, until a moment prior, Eddie had been enjoying quite a nice conversation with.

Venom walks them out of the dead silent bar, and Eddie lets him. He has no interest in facing the situation, and exhaustedly he crosses that bar off his rapidly thinning list of venues he’s allowed within ten feet of.

“What,” he says, once Venom has returned them to the dubious safety of their apartment, “the _fuck_ was that about?”

This time, Venom doesn’t stay curled up in his organs. He rises from Eddie’s skin, morphing into a face with far too many teeth and eyes sharp enough to cut. _Flirting_ , he hisses.

This time Eddie can’t even take the moral high ground. He _had_ been flirting; it just hadn’t occurred to him that Venom might find it objectionable.

“Look,” he says, striving for a reasonable tone that does not come naturally to him, “it was just - it didn’t mean anything, okay? I wouldn’t have just…” Eddie makes a vague hand gesture that he hopes encompasses the general idea of sex without having to say the word. “Not without talking to you about it first.”

 _Want to kiss him?_ Venom asks, and the way he says ‘kiss’ makes it sound almost as poisonous as his own namesake. _Fuck him?_

Eddie glances towards the water stained roof and prays to a god he does not believe in for patience. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m only human. I’ve got desires. Wants.”

The watery tendrils of Venom’s being curl tighter around his arm, the back of his neck. Contemplative. Possessive. Nothing new with that.

 _Physical intimacy,_ Venom says, _is one of your desires? Your wants?_

“Jesus, sometimes, alright?”

_With him?_

Eddie shrugs. “He wasn’t awful on the eyes, and he seemed interested back.”

Venom squeezes tight enough to bruise, if only Eddie’s skin would. _You don’t need him,_ Venom says. _You have me_.

“I know I’ve got you,” Eddie says. “I just want - I want more than one person, okay? Fuck, you’re not even a _person_ , not really.”

The hurt that blooms deep in Eddie’s gut feels incredibly person-like. _Not human,_ Venom says. _Still a person. A being._

Eddie deeply wishes there was a handbook for this: _How To Communicate With Your Symbiotic Alien Life Partner Without Being A Dick._ There’s gotta be a market out there for it somewhere.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, and then, because he really is and he doesn’t know how to prove it, he reaches out and gently pats Venom’s head.

 _Not a dog either,_ Venom grouses, but he gives a subtle shiver underneath Eddie’s palm.

“Yeah, I know. You’re me - and I’m you. We’re _we_.”

Venom’s shiver this time is far less subtle. Eddie had picked up pretty early on how much it pleases him when Eddie acknowledges their codependent bond. _But you still want to… be with others._

“I want to not be alone all the time,” Eddie confesses. “I’m not - I’m not made for that. I never was.”

_You want him?_

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No,” he says. “Doesn’t have to be him. Doesn’t have to be anybody you don’t want it to be, okay?”

Venom still doesn’t seem happy, but he roils along Eddie’s skin, sinking into it, combining them once again. _Not him,_ Venom decided. _Not the girl either_.

Eddie doesn’t really give two shits about them one way or another. “Not them,” he agrees. “Are we good?”

 _We’re good,_ Venom says.

(again, Eddie doesn’t think they feel ‘good’ but he’s too much of a coward to say anything.)

.

For a week or two, they’re alright.

Life continues on, and they keep doing as they’ve been doing. Eddie’s even feeling generous enough that he goes for a walk on the less savoury side of the town and finds Venom a meal or two. He still can’t quite warm to the feeling of bone splintering in their teeth, but it makes Venom happy, and that makes Eddie happy too.

Then he gets a job for the Brock Report.

The job goes well - really well, actually. So well that Eddie’s two temporary coworkers invite him out for a drink afterwards. Eddie says yes without thinking. At the back of his mind, Venom gives an unhappy rumble.

 _Shit_ , Eddie thinks, but he doesn’t want to lose his first chance at real live human social contact in weeks just because Venom’s in a snit.

They head to a bar three streets over from Eddie’s apartment, and Louis goes to get the first round, leaving Eddie and Sarah in a cramped booth at the back.

“You know,” Sarah says, smiling at him broadly, “I really expected you to be more of an asshole.”

“What? Why?” Eddie asks, offended.

Sarah laughs, patting him on the shoulder. Venom’s annoyance is so strong that Eddie has to fight the instinctual response to pull away from her touch. “Well, you know, word got around about how your show crashed and burned a couple of months ago,” she says. “A lot of the rumors said that it was a direct result of you being… unpleasant to work with.”

“Unpleasant to work with? Unpleasant to - unbelievable,” Eddie mutters. “I’m a professional, okay? My career ... hit a speed bump because Carlton Drake was a manipulative fraud.”

“Well, we know that now,” Louis says as he returns, passing Sarah and Eddie a beer. “But you know what rumours are like in this industry.”

“Cheers to that,” Sarah says, holding up her bottle, and the lot of them toast.

“It’s good to see that you bounced back alright,” Louis says. “A lot of men don’t come back from that sort of disgrace.”

“Hey,” Sarah says, elbowing him.

“And women,” Louis adds dutifully.

Eddie shrugs, picking at the label on his bottle. “I won’t lie, it was kind of rough for a while there, but I’m doing alright now.”

Sarah’s smile is pleased and warm, and she leans against Eddie’s shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it,” she says.

 _Back off,_ Venom snaps internally, and before Eddie can stop him, Venom shoulders her away _hard_.

Sarah startles and pulls back, looking at him in hurt confusion and Eddie hurries to say, “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t - sore shoulder. Came off my bike the other week and it’s still a little messed up.”

To his relief her hurt morphs into concern. “Oh, I’m - I didn’t think! Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says shortly.

 _It’s not okay_ , Venom snarls, prickly and frightful beneath Eddie’s skin.

Eddie wants to ask what his damn problem is, but he still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of nonverbal communication the way Venom has, and the very last thing he wants to do right now is start talking to himself. Instead, he focuses on how displeased and frustrated he is, hoping that Venom can feel it, and grits out a smile to his companions.

Eddie says, a touch too loudly around a mouthful of beer, “you said something about another possible gig?”

“Only if you’re interested,” Louis says, and launches into a very detailed summary of his suspicions towards a local senator and his sudden acquisition of wealth.

It’s a good story - it could be a _great_ one if Eddie can get his hands on it, but it’s a struggle to even catch every other word Louis says. He’s distracted by the twist in his gut, the angry shuddering trying to sneak out and shiver along his skin.

Eddie’s never had to work so hard to contain Venom before. It’s disconcerting.

“So,” Louis says, after a suitable amount of time ranting about political corruption, “what do you think?”

“I think…” Eddie pauses, jamming his mouth shut as his stomach gives an indescribable roll. “I think I’m gonna be sick. Here, hold my beer.”

He thrusts his bottle at a bewildered Sarah, and climbs over Louis in his hurry to get out of the booth. He barely makes it to the shitty bathroom in time, clutching onto the toilet bowl as he hurls up Venom’s last meal.

When he pulls back, he’s sweaty and gross, and there’s a hunk of human hair drifting amongst the unnatural red of the water. “What,” Eddie chokes out, “was _that_?”

 _Poison,_ Venom says, sounding almost a little pleased.

“Poison, what - you mean my beer?”

_You humans may poison yourselves for fun, but we are not equipped to consume that. It rebels against our biology._

“That can’t be right,” Eddie says. “I’ve never - this hasn’t happened before.”

 _You haven’t tried drinking before,_ Venom says. _Not since that first time._

Eddie thinks that has to be wrong, but when he searches frantically through his shaky memories of the past few months, he’s surprised to realize Venom’s right. He hasn’t had a single drink since the morning with the expired chicken and tater tots that left him projectile vomiting.

He spits out a mouthful of bloody bile. “You couldn’t have said something _before_ I drank it?”

Venom doesn’t reply, but his smug feeling of satisfaction is enough.

“Oh, you absolute - you’re punishing me? For hanging out with friends? _Really?”_

 _They’re not friends,_ Venom says.

“They could be! If you’d let -.”

_I’m your friend._

“I’m not -.”

There’s footsteps behind him and Eddie cuts off his furious retort, flushing the toilet in a hurry before somebody accidentally sees the evidence of his activities as a part-time cannibal.

“Eddie? You in here?”

It’s Louis, and Eddie has barely a moment to wipe his mouth before the men’s room door opens. Louis doesn’t look surprised to see him hunched over in a cubicle. “You need a hand?”

“Uh, maybe some water would be cool.”

“That I can do.” Louis vanishes back into the bar and Eddie stumbles to his feet.

“We’re talking about this later,” he says. “You can’t fuck with our body just because you’re mad at me.”

 _You’re the one who drank the beer,_ Venom says. _I didn’t do anything._

Eddie’s gearing up for a real ripping response to that, but Louis is back, this time with Sarah hovering behind his shoulder. He presses a cool glass of water into Eddie’s hand. “Are you sick? Do you need a ride home or something?”

Eddie spares them a wane smile. “Must have been something I ate,” he says, and tries not to think about how a half digested human looked floating in a toilet bowl. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sarah says. “Just maybe give us a heads up before you nearly puke at the table next time.”

The fact that the both of them think there’ll be a ‘next time’ warms Eddie from the tips of his toes to the tip of his foul-smelling tongue which can, under Venom’s influence, be quite sizable.

“Thanks for the help,” Eddie says, clapping Louis on the shoulder. “Raincheck for tonight?”

“You have our numbers,” Sarah says, and the both of them walk Eddie to the door like he’s made of glass.

The outside evening air helps clear some of the furious fog from his head, but not enough. He barely makes it a block before he bursts out with, “What is your _problem_ lately?”

Venom prickles along the back of his neck, not quite rising but skimming the surface of Eddie’s skin with black. _You said it wouldn’t be with anybody I didn’t want._

“I did, because for some fucking reason I thought you’d be - if not _rational,_ at least _fair_ about this whole thing.”

_‘This whole thing’?_

Eddie opens his arms wide and gestures at his own body with vigour. An old woman who had been walking past gives him a frightened glance, but Eddie barely notices.

“This. Us. _We_.”

 _We are not simply a thing,_ Venom says. _We are a perfect union. We are -_

Eddie’s not in the mood for Venom’s poetics about their unmatchable chemistry tonight. “Let me put it to you like this; do you like it when I’m unhappy? Does this ‘perfect union’ include my misery?”

He can physically feel Venom’s hesitation. _No, but -_

“Ain’t no ‘but’, Vee,” Eddie says. “I’m unhappy. You’re making me unhappy.”

Venom goes quiet. Eddie tucks his hands into his pockets and walks the rest of the way back to the apartment. He doesn’t hear so much as a peep until he’s slipping his key into the lock.

 _I don’t want you to be unhappy,_ Venom says. _Your unhappiness is my unhappiness._

Eddie pauses. Waiting. Venom doesn’t say anything else. Sighing, Eddie rests his forehead against the front door. “I don’t want you to be unhappy either,” he says. “This is a two-way street. We have to meet each other in the middle. I’m willing to work with you on this; are you willing to work with me?”

 _Always,_ Venom says, sounding dangerously close to tender, which is actually pretty unnerving coming from a creature that evolved to bite the head off lesser species. A bit like having a jungle cat rub up against your legs, Eddie imagines. _I’m always with you, Eddie_.

“Good,” Eddie says, and lets that be the end of it for now.

.

After that, Venom improves. A little. Enough.

He stops throwing a tantrum every time somebody so much as gives Eddie the time of day. He goes out with Sarah and Louis again - this time for coffee, no alcohol in sight - and Venom isn’t graceful about it, but he doesn’t protest.

Eddie even manages one incredibly lukewarm date with the girl who works at his favourite curry house. Venom doesn’t say a damn thing the whole evening, which probably should have been nice, but instead just made the whole thing exhausting and lonely.

Eddie doesn’t kiss her goodnight, and she doesn’t offer a phone number.

That night when Eddie sags in front of the TV with an unenthusiastic can of soda, Venom crawls out along his skin, not doing anything in particular other than… curling up with him in an ever-shifting outline of a person.

It’s a better end to the night than Eddie had expected, and he winds up falling asleep like that, the ghost of Venom’s soothing and consuming touch along his skin carrying him to sweet dreams.

It’s good. It’s real good. The issue doesn’t feel resolved, exactly, but there’s a solid shift in their dynamic that feels a lot more comfortable.

Foolishly, Eddie hopes that this means they won’t have to talk about it again, that they can maintain their unsteady status quo. That things are genuinely _alright_ now.

They’re not. It doesn’t make it past a month.

It’s been six weeks and three days since Eddie had last seen Anne. Not through any nefarious avoidance on either of their behalves, just a general lack of time and a clash of schedules.

Eddie misses her, but he also doesn’t want to push. The fact that he’s allowed back in her life at all is nothing short of a miracle, and he doesn’t want to mess it up for anything.

To his surprise, it’s Dan that reaches out to him, calling him one early evening and extending a cheerful dinner invitation.

“We’re having roast,” he says. “I always wind up cooking too much for just two people. You’d be doing us a favour if you came, really. Unless you already had plans.”

The microwaves dings, and Eddie pulls out a plate of steaming tater tots. “I don’t know,” he says, dithering uncharacteristically. “I wouldn’t want to intrude or anything.”

“You’re not,” Dan says firmly. “Anne and I would love to have you.”

 _And you would love to have Anne,_ Venom says, like a child.

Eddie bites back a scowl. He glances back at the tater tots and realizes that he really doesn’t want to eat that when Dan is on the phone luring him over with the promise of a large hunk of meat - not the same as getting it fresh, but certainly better than tater tots.

 _Go,_ Venom says. _Meat. I’m hungry. Anne._

Eddie pulls the phone away from his mouth and says, “You know I hate it when you don’t talk in complete sentences.”

 _Fuck you,_ Venom says with cheerful clarity.

“Eddie? Sorry, I didn’t catch that last part.”

Eddie brings the phone back up. “I’ll be there,” he says. “Thank for the invite.”

“We look forward to seeing you,” Dan says, and he’s so damn _nice_ about it all, that Eddie can’t even begrudge him properly when he hangs up.

Eddie dumps the tater tots in the trash and shrugs on his good jacket, but pauses at the threshold for a moment as a thought occurs to him.

_Eddie?_

“You’re not gonna...” He runs an agitated hand through his hand. “Is this alright? Me seeing Anne and Dan?”

Venom’s surprise is palpable, and Eddie feels immediately bad that his concern is apparently so rare that it takes Venom off guard. _Would seeing them make you happy?_

Eddie opens his mouth to reply automatically, closes it, and considers. “I don’t know.”

 _Let’s find out,_ Venom suggests.

.

The roast alone is worth the visit in the end. It’s tender and perfect, breaking apart beneath his fork, and Eddie just about gets hard eating it. He blames Venom for that; he never had an unhealthy connection between food and pleasure before he came along.

Even Venom doesn’t hate it. _It’s dead meat,_ he says, _but it’s edible._

‘Edible’ is really the highest compliment Venom is capable of giving food that doesn’t fight back, but Eddie decides to keep it to himself. Something tells him Dan and Anne wouldn’t appreciate the perspective.

“You’re looking better, Eddie,” Anne says after the last of the lamb has been reduced to scraps.

Eddie glances down at the bone he’d been sucking the marrow out of and awkwardly sets it down. “How did I look before?”

“Like you had a parasite devouring your organs,” Dan says, getting up to clear the plates.

 _Not a parasite,_ Venom grumbles, and Eddie does his best to soothe along the frazzled annoyance emitting from him.

“Well, you know,” Eddie says vaguely, and then, because it’s the truth, “I’m not drinking anymore.”

Anne looks so pleased that Eddie immediately feels a little guilty for the tacit lie. “Good,” she said. “You were never an attractive drunk.”

“Ouch, Anne, that hurts.”

Dan laughs, loading the last of the plates up on his arm with ease that speaks to a career of waiting tables to put himself through school. “As a doctor, it’s my duty to support that decision.”

“You see? That’s how you be a supportive friend. You could learn something from him, Anne,” Eddie says, clapping Dan on the shoulder as he passes by. Dan gives him a charmed smile and heads to the kitchen with the dishes.

It only occurs to Eddie after Dan’s already gone, but this is the first time he’s been alone with Anne companionably since… before their break up, he supposes.

 _Not alone,_ Venom reminds me him with an aggressive, pointed tug at Eddie’s guts. _Never alone_.

Anne leans forward, propping her elbow on the tabletop and resting her chin on the back of her hand. “So,” she says into the quiet, “how are you doing, really?”

“What do you mean?”’

Anne gives him a pitying look. “I mean without Venom,” she says. “I know you were… you thought you were close.”

Eddie straightens up at that. “What do you mean _thought_?”

Anne blinks, surprised by the sharpness of his tone. “Nothing,” she says. “Just… he was killing you, Eddie. You remember that part?”

“That was a misunderstanding,” Eddie says. “He wasn’t hurting me. He would never hurt me.”

Anne’s gaze sharpens. “ _Would?_ Is there something you want to tell me?”

 _Fuck,_ Eddie thinks, scrambling for a reply. “I mean - just. If I ever saw him again. Hypothetically.”

Anne doesn’t look convinced, and Eddie does his best to look like somebody who didn’t skulk down a dark alley and devour an attempted mugger only three days ago.

“Eddie,” she says, “you’d tell me if you were in trouble again, wouldn’t you?”

Relieved, Eddie truthfully says, “I would. I promise I would.”

Venom isn’t trouble. Venom could never be trouble, even when he’s on his worst behaviour. Venom belongs with him, now and always.

Anne studies him quietly for a moment, and the concern on her face eases. “Alright,” she says. “I don’t - I know I don’t have any right to nag you when we’re not…”

Eddie’s heart stutters, and this time it has nothing to do with Venom’s physical proximity to it. “Anne,” he says, a little uselessly, but she just talks over him.

“I still worry about you. You need somebody to worry about you, I think.” She smiles ruefully, and it’s so reminiscent of the old days before everything crashed and burned that Eddie has to fight the urge to reach for her hand. “If you can’t look out for yourself for you, look out for yourself for me, okay?”

Eddie stares at her, the breadth of her lashes and the pink of her cheeks, and suddenly, viscerally remembers what it had been like to be so madly in love with her that everything else had seemed secondary at best.

The feeling is intense and beautiful for one long, gorgeous moment - and then it crumbles in on itself.

 _No,_ Venom snarls, and the strength of jealous fury nearly knocks Eddie to his knees - it does send the cutlery flying as he slams his hands down on the table, seat rocketing backwards as he gets to his feet.

“Eddie?” Anne asks, alarmed. “What -?”

Venom is dangerously close to rising, pushing himself past Eddie’s objections and smoking out from his skin. Eddie does want to tell Anne the truth one day – but not like this.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I gotta - I’m just…”

No excuse leaps to him and he simply flees the room, leaving Anne open mouthed and visibly upset in his wake. He runs into Dan just as he comes out of the kitchen, drying his hands with a towel, and it’s only Venom’s quick reflexes that keep them from colliding.

“Eddie?” Dan blinks at him. “What’s wrong?”

Eddie shoulders past him, grabs his jacket from beside the door, and stumbles out of the house, tripping on the stoop out front and nearly landing flat on his face. He doesn’t wait to see if either of them try and follow - just fucking sprints down the street, leaving his bike lonely and sad-looking by the road.

He can always come back for it later.

Venom is a riot, a marvel of rolling emotions thick enough to choke on, and by the time Eddie has run the several blocks home, he’s about ready to explode from the tension.

He fumbles with the keys, jittery fingers unable to steady long enough to get to the lock, and he swears long and furiously.

He hears the door behind him open, and his neighbour pokes his head out, scowling. Different neighbour than the one who was here when Drake’s troops stormed the building. That one had been gone by the time everything had settled enough for Eddie to come back home. This one isn’t any better.

“Hey, dude,” his neighbour says. “Do you mind keeping it down.”

Eddie whips around and _snarls_. He can feel the flicker of Venom over his skin, like a familiar mask.

His neighbour goes white as a sheet, steps back, and disappears behind the frantic slam of his door.

Eddie turns back around decided _fuck it_ and uses his supernatural strength to break the door open. It pops open with a faint splintering sound and Eddie shoulders in and slams it shut. It lists a little in the doorframe, and the lock is long dead, but at least it’s some level of privacy.

And Eddie wants privacy for this.

He whirls around to face the apartment and all but shouts, “What the _fuck_ was that about?”

Venom’s emotions are still a turmoil, and he explodes into being, large and dark, looking over Eddie as he grows from his skin. _No,_ he snarls, hands clamping on Eddie’s shoulders. _Not her._

“ _Anne?_ ” Eddie asks. “We like Anne! You _like_ Anne! You’ve never had a problem with her before - I asked you, Vee. I asked you if this was okay.”

 _It was_ , Venom says, jaw opening wide. _And now it’s not._

Eddie wants to kick something. Some _one_. “That’s not how this works! You can’t just - just throw a tantrum and get your way every single time.”

_I can. I will._

Eddie shoves at him, but his hands just phase into Venom’s chest, caught in the black flood of his being. He tries to pull back, but it’s fruitless. “That’s not a partnership,” Eddie says. “That’s not _us_.”

He feels the tremor of Venom’s consideration across every inch of his skin. _Is Anne us too?_

Eddie cannot follow this conversation at all. “Anne is _Anne_. Fuck, when this started, you wanted me to win her back. What happened to _that_?”

Whatever Eddie had said triggers something in Venom, because the tentative consideration vanishes, and they’re back to angry, possessive waves of jealousy. _No._

“No? No getting back together? No Anne? No _what_ , Venom?”

_We don’t need anybody. We have each other._

“We’ve talked about this,” Eddie says. “At length. Extensively. What part of ‘humans need social contact’ is getting lost in translation here?”

Venom has crept along Eddie’s wrists, caressing along his skin. The blackness slides up, over his shoulder and up his throat, until it can tilt his chin up so they’re looking eye-to-eye. The touch is shockingly soft for all that it’s pushy.

 _Eddie,_ Venom says, furtive. _Eddie_.

 _Christ,_ Eddie thinks, a little hysterically.

“Venom,” Eddie says, as contained and quiet as he can, “what’s this really about?”

Venom stares at him with the wide whites of his eyes and doesn’t say anything. The tendril curled around Eddie’s neck grows, twisting tighter, higher, until it can split and cradle his head like a web. He feels surrounded, drowning in the touch of Venom everywhere, assured and comforting.

 _You’re mine,_ Venom says. _Are you mine, Eddie?_

“You know I’m yours,” Eddie says. “Are you _mine_?”

A tendril flutters along his cheek, soothing along the high of it. _All yours,_ Venom says. _So why will you not be all mine?_

The vicious longing in that statement is enough to render Eddie speechless. It’s not kind - not nice. It’s raw and possessive, and if a human ever said that to Eddie, in those words and that tone, he’d be out the door so fast.

This isn’t anybody else. This isn’t a human. This is Venom, who lives in all the dark places inside of him that Eddie always thought would kill somebody on contact.

Venom doesn’t make Eddie a better person. Arguably, he’s made him into a monster.

Eddie doesn’t care. He thinks - he _knows_ \- he’d kill as many people as it took to keep them together.

Eddie pulls at his hands and this time Venom lets him go. Gently, feeling like a fool, Eddie reaches up. His hands are too small and Venom’s face too big to cup his cheeks exactly, but Eddie presses his palms there, feels the cool richness of Venom’s being.

“Is that what this has been?” he asks. “You’re worried that by having other people in my life that you’ll have to … share me? That I don’t think you’re enough?”

Venom hisses at him, tongue snaking out to flicker ominously over his sizable teeth. Eddie doesn’t flinch from the implicit threat.

 _I make you unhappy,_ Venom says, a little tentative.

“Don’t be an idiot, you know you don’t,” Eddie says without hesitation. “You can feel my emotions - you can feel _me_.”

 _Unhappy,_ Venom insists. _You told me._

“I told you it made me unhappy when you hold my company hostage.” Eddie gives him a stern look, shaking him as best as he can with the hands on Venom’s face. “Just because I don’t want to be shut up in my apartment until I go crazy doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with _us_.”

He can feel Venom’s touch everywhere, slinking over him in inky, shifting sands. _You want from others what I am willing to share_.

Eddie frowns. “I don’t -.”

Venom shifts in closer and for a moment Eddie irrationally thinks Venom’s going to bite him, but he just presses their foreheads together. It’s a strange feeling, leaning against something that feels both solid and intangible, feeling it crawling all over his skin.

 _Everything I have is yours,_ Venom says. _Whatever you want from other people, I have for you. Everything._

It takes Eddie a solid several seconds to process that, and then several more to really _understand_ it.

He thinks, wildly, of sitting with Anne on the doorstep after everything had finished and Venom had returned to him.

 _Your buddy’s into you,_ she’d said, and at the time Eddie had thought she was just being tactless, or making a really bad pun.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, like a revelation, and the whole world tilts on its axis.

“You want…” Eddie swallows, feels more awkward than he can ever remember being.

 _Mine,_ Venom says again, like it’s his new favourite word. _No boundaries. No divisions. Everything. Whatever you want from me, nobody else. Not like -_

“Like Anne?” Eddie supplies

Venom growls. Eddie can feel it all over his body. _I don’t want anybody else to have you in that way._

“So this whole time, you being an isolating, pushy asshole, was just because you felt _jealous_?”

 _Not jealous_ , Venom denies sullenly, but his possessive touch says otherwise. There’s a tendril slipping underneath Eddie’s shirt, breezing along the bare skin of his hip, incredibly intimate.

“Is this what you want though?” Eddie asks. “Or are you just offering me a compromise you think I’ll accept?”

There’s a flicker of amusement from Venom and he pulls back, startling Eddie. He’s not gone for long though, because he’s back, drifting closer, face against the crook of Eddie’s neck. _I want all of you,_ he says, hungry. _Don’t be slow, Eddie. You’re mine. Mine. I want it all._

Eddie shivers. At this point, he can’t help it. He feels warm, surrounded and encompassed by Venom in his entirety, slinking under his clothes, touching every part of him that he can, all with the confidence that Eddie isn’t going to push him away.

The worst part is that he’s _right_.

“And how does this work, exactly?” Eddie grunts, a touch ghosting along sensitive skin. “You being my everything?”

 _Like this,_ Venom says, voice smooth as silk. _Let me show you._

And god help him - Eddie _does_.

Venom touches him everywhere, pushing aside Eddie’s clothes with ease and familiarity. He’s curious, hungry - delighted, Eddie feels. Positively _giddy_ with it all, the permission to do anything and everything he wants, and the knowledge that Eddie will _let_ him.

Eddie hisses out a gasp when he feels Venom’s wet tongue on his throat, tilting his head back. “Don’t get too cocky,” he says, distressingly breathless.

A caress flutters over his dick, pushing against the growing hardness there. _Cocky,_ Venom repeats, childishly amused.

Eddie wraps his hands around the vague, shapeless vicinity of what passes for Venom’s shoulders. “It’s a turn of - _fuck_ \- phrase.”

 _Fuck,_ Venom says, just as goddamn amused, and Eddie gives up on talking to him at all.

In all his life, Eddie had never thought about sex with a symbiotic alien that he shares a telepathic bond with. If he had, he thinks his first question would probably be, _how does that even work?_

It turns out that it works _incredibly_ well.

It’s like - it’s not like anything. It’s an intensity of experience, being touched and coveted, having Venom react to every flare of furious pleasure that crosses the frazzled synapses of Eddie’s brain.

 _Good, Eddie?_ Venom asks, working Eddie’s dick so well that Eddie’s shaking from sheer overload. _Are you unhappy now?_

“Don’t ask questions you know the answer to,” Eddie grunts, trying his hardest not to splinter apart under it all.

Venom licks away the sweat beading on his forehead and that’s it - Eddie’s done. He comes _hard,_ and his pleasure echoes back to Venom, which echoes back to him, leaving them caught in a feedback loop so good that Eddie thinks he honest to god blacks out for a second there.

When he comes back to himself, Venom is covering him like a blanket, warm and encompassing. “Is this cuddling?” Eddie slurs. “Is that what we’re doing?”

 _Mine,_ Venom all but purrs, and he feels… _satisfied_. Happy. About the most content Eddie has ever felt from him.

And Eddie feels - about exactly as he had before. He stares at the ceiling, one hand on Venom’s back. The depth of his feelings and commitment to Venom aren’t anything new. He thinks they’ve been destined to wind up here since the start, or he would if he believed in any of that destiny bullshit.

Mostly he feels _good_. Satisfied. Happy. Content.

If this is what Venom wants from him, it’s not a hardship to give. If he’s being honest - which he tries his hardest not to make a habit of - he knows that he hasn’t been interested in anybody _like this_ since long before Venom decided to make an issue out of it.

 _Eddie?_ Venom stirs against him. _You’re feeling… odd._

“Thinking,” Eddie says absently.

_No wonder I didn’t recognize it._

Eddie shoves at him halfheartedly, but Venom just bleeds out alongside his touch before rubber-banding back.

He gets a whole thirty seconds of quiet in his damn head before Venom says, _What thoughts?_

“Nosy asshole, aren’t you?”

Venom tightens around him. _Eddie._

Eddie snorts, fumbling his arms free, pushing until Venom relents, and allows him up, clinging to his skin and moving with him in rippling wave of oil. “Good thoughts,” he says. “They were - they were good thoughts.”

Venom’s pleasure is immediate and apparent. _I will do my best not to get cocky._

Eddie rolls his eyes and stumbles to the sink, filling up a glass to wash the parched, post-coital dryness from his mouth. “Probably a good idea.”

_You, however, I will try my hardest to get cocky as often as I can._

Eddie snorts into his glass, but it’s more out of amusement than any real offense. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

 _Funnier than you_.

“You know what will be funny, huh? Trying to explain to Anne what happened tonight.”

If he expected guilt from Venom he’s sorely disappointed. All he gets is a pleased, smug satisfaction. _It won’t happen again._

Eddie sets the glass down. “Not just with Anne,” he says. “With anybody, Vee. You’ve got me, alright? Everything is yours. I’m not offering anybody jack shit, not asking for anything either. So you’ve got to stop losing it every time I want to speak to somebody for more than ten seconds at a time.”

 _I wasn’t so bad,_ Venom says, in the tone of somebody who knows there’s no moral high ground in sight.

“Yeah. You were worse.”

 _Come to bed_ , Venom coaxes, and he tugs at Eddie, trying to entice him with nothing but implication and pressure.

Eddie resists. “I mean it. No more of that. If you really have an issue with somebody, we talk about it, alright?”

He feels as if he can physically feel Venom’s sigh. _I promise_ , he says. _I will be … better about your little friends._

It’s not a ringing endorsement, but it’s a promise, and Venom doesn’t offer those easily. Eddie lets go, allows himself to be gently walked to the bed; allow Venom to direct him to pull his shirt off, drop his pants, and crawl into the warmth.

He feels Venom slithering along his skin, exploring. He drifts south, and Eddie does his best not to startle at the cool touch. _How long until we can do that again?_

Eddie laughs. “Probably longer than you’d like,” he says, and when he reaches a hand beneath the covers, Venom hooks onto his fingers and roils up and over Eddie’s chest. “How about you let me get a short nap in, then we’ll see what we can do.”

 _Nap,_ Venom says with sleepy fondness.

Eddie has never been quite able to figure out whether Venom even sleeps, but he seems to enjoy it when Eddie does at the very least, which works well enough for the both of them.

“Nap,” Eddie says, “then an encore performance - and then maybe we’ll go for a walk and see if we can find you a snack to make up what a disaster dinner was.”

Venom’s affection is crushing. _Eddie_. _Mine._

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “You’re mine too, jackass. And hey - we just survived our first fight as a couple.”

Venom’s amusement in a grim fluttering in his ribcage. _Always a couple,_ he says. _Perfect union._

“I know, I know.”

 _Mine_.

“I know that too."

 _Sleep_.

Venom presses him down against the sheet, more comforting than any blanket could ever hope to be, stroking along his naked shoulders and curling around him. A smoky hand slips into Eddie’s own, fingers latched together, and it should be disconcerting holding hands with a being that’s nothing more than a void stretched over his skin, but it’s not.

Eddie goes to sleep feeling the most comforted he can remember being in a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> listen, i have never seen a bandwagon i did not immediately want to jump on. i watched this in the cinema, came home, and wrote this whole thing in a single sitting at 12am. i hope the end result is as enjoyable to read as it was to write. 
> 
> tumblr: glenflower  
> twitter: @doingwritebyme


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